Who: Harrycan & Ginnycan What: falling apart (& maybe putting it back together, even a little?) on the night before the hangings. When: Tuesday evening Where: New family house Warnings: ALL THE SADS.
Harry had not even begun to sort out all his feelings. He'd been through so many recently; he'd had a complete hysterical breakdown when his actual dad had arrived at the compound while he was still in his jail cell, crying and laughing all at once. That had almost been pleasant, really, to fall apart, and the hysteria of it made almost everything morbidly funny. But then he'd pulled himself back together and stoically endured his trial, prepared to hear the guilty verdict.
It didn't come. And that, somehow, was worse. He was always innocent at the wrong times, always alive when he shouldn't be, when everyone else was suffering. He'd left the trial raging at the world, furious and sad and terrified, and above all determined to do something about it. He had to try, even if it was futile. There was no way he was just going to sit around and wait.
And for a while, the plan they'd put together had kept him going. As long as there was hope, as long as there was something to do that might make a difference, he could hold his emotions in check. He had spent the better part of a year in auror training learning to do just that, to turn fear and sadness into anger and let anger fuel him to keep going. It was a relatively natural process for him anyway, but losing his head under pressure was definitely his biggest weakness, so they had drilled him on that over and over.
But there was a limit to how well even he could hold it together. Moody told him not to crack, but she wasn't down here in the thick of it; this wasn't her family that was falling apart. There were so many people set to hang tomorrow that Harry loved, and if the plan didn't work-- and he had a horrible suspicion that the scientists knew it wouldn't-- they would die, all of them. Horribly. Ten to twenty minutes of suffocation. And he was going to be there to see every second of it.
He wasn't even sure he was going to take any satisfaction from watching Bellatrix die, now. Not now that he knew there was at least one person he sympathized with who would be hurting over it. He probably shouldn't have talked to Narcissa, but he felt obligated to; Bellatrix couldn't answer, and it hadn't looked like anyone else was going to. He suspected this Narcissa hadn't done it yet, and perhaps never was going to, but she was still a person who might grow up to save his life. And so he'd delivered the news, as kindly as he possibly could.
And now he'd been without anything to do for far too long. He had been sitting outside near the forest with his journal, to be alone, but now he was going home to Ginny. And that sounded like a very good idea, because he really wasn't feeling very steady as he walked. He really just wanted to see her, to hold on to her and be selfishly relieved that she was alive. He would have loved to hug his mother and Alby too, and his dad, but the former two were afflicted and wouldn't really understand why, and the latter was back at the compound. And Sirius... he didn't know where Sirius was. Either of them, for that matter. Hopefully neither of them were doing anything stupid enough to get themselves killed.
He stuck his journal in his pocket and opened the door to the house. There was a slight feeling of relief at simply doing that, because his "family" was so far unafflicted; having to pretend to be a good Puritan under his own roof, especially when he wanted time alone with Ginny, would have been incredibly stressful. But once the door was closed behind him, he was in a relatively safe place, out of view of most eyes. Unfortunately, the click of the door made him feel like his composure was cracking, and he pushed himself away from it so that he wouldn't give in to the pressure, calling out, "Gin?"